


Little Yellow House

by lovesrogue36



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Because there are so many ways he can hurt himself, Daily life in Haven, F/M, Kissing, Nathan-proofed house, POV Inanimate Object, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesrogue36/pseuds/lovesrogue36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a little yellow house on a bluff. It has been witness to one family's grief, Trouble, loss and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Yellow House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynsco13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynsco13/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by this behind-the-scenes Instagram post but is not based on any actual spoilers (nor is this picture vital to an understanding of the fic, so view at your own discretion): https://instagram.com/p/vV5-1DjETd/
> 
> Thank you to my prompter - I hope you enjoy!

There is a little yellow house on a bluff. It was his parents’ house, the house he grew up in. He moved back in when his dad died and still tiptoes around like he’s going to wake somebody. The wallpaper is green and gold and every stick of furniture is a hand-me-down. His mother’s antique mixer still sits on the kitchen counter, pretty much exactly where she left it seventeen years ago, untouched. He’s not much of a chef, after all, just a pancake connoisseur.

The living room rug is extra soft and plush so he can imagine it cushioning his bare feet on mornings he assumes are cold. It’s the only thing he’s added to the room since he moved in. He likes to know there are sensory experiences to be had, even if he can’t have them himself.

There’s one lonely coat in the hall closet and he’s pretty sure someone left it there because it isn’t his.

Frames hang on the wall up the stairs, filled with frozen generations of Wuornoses.

If the downstairs seems dated, the upstairs is straight-up retro. There’s a clawfoot tub under a little round window and a medicine cabinet filled with little more than q-tips. The tile is lined from wall to wall with bath mats because he can’t tell when water splashes onto the floor. Better not to slip and crack his skull open first thing in the morning.

Cleaning out his parents’ old room was the hardest obstacle to moving in; he slept in his tiny childhood bedroom for a month before he got up the courage. After all that, all he really changed was the mattress anyway.

The view from the master is the best in the house though, of that there’s no doubt. From the bed he can look out over the cliffs to the rocky beach below, count white caps crashing and fading away in the distance and watch seagulls glide above the water with all the grace of the mermaids he didn’t used to think were real. He wonders what that feels like, gliding through the air with wind beating on your body and saltwater splashing beneath you.

\---

It’s funny how a house shifts and changes with the people inside it. This little yellow house on a bluff by the seaside, it was home to almost two decades of grief. A man who lost his wife and then a boy who lost his father.

And then gradually, it becomes home to something else, something the little house doesn’t recognize at first. Something it hasn’t played host to in many, many years.

\---

It starts with more laughter in the kitchen, more beer in the fridge. A visitor with blond hair and too-sharp eyes and a quirky sense of humor.

Her jacket finds its way into the hall closet beside the mystery coat and several pairs of his socks disappear from the dresser because she claims his house is drafty, even if he can’t tell.

There are always two glasses in the sink at the end of the night now and though there’s more dishes to clean, the cleaning goes by more quickly with two sets of hands, brushing against each other in the soapy water.

For his birthday, she gives him new pillows for the couch and a coat of his own to put in the hall closet. Somewhere along the line, she slaps a pad of sticky notes on the fridge so she can remind him to actually put the coat  on .

\---

And then she vanishes, and for a time, so does he.

When he comes home, he isn’t the same. He was never particularly friendly before, but now no one stops in to bring him casseroles and he no longer offers to chop his neighbors’ firewood. There are no more glasses in the sink because he takes to drinking straight from the bottle.

And then she comes home, the girl who had brightened this little yellow house, and she isn’t the same either.

\---

Her hair is darker and, although her intentions are as pure as ever, her spirit seems darker too. She breaks into his house and sits at his kitchen table, painting purple over chipped black nail polish. She spills it on the floor and doesn’t clean it up so there’s going to be a patch of purple tile there for the rest of their very short lives.

His very short life, anyway, if he has his say.

She refuses. She drinks his whiskey and tries to beat her time picking the lock on his handcuffs and somewhere along the line, it becomes clear that she’s only pretending. Still, she refuses. She refuses to end his life and to fill this little yellow house with grief again. This time it would be her own.

He tried to be unselfish and self-sacrificing but at the end of the day, all he wants is to wrap her in his arms and never let the rot of this town touch her ever again. She knows this, and so she leads him upstairs each night and asks him to undress her, asks him to strip her down to the version of herself they both recognize.

\---

The little yellow house watches their lives play out inside its walls and wishes it could protect them from everything that is to come.

\---

The darkest chapter of their lives arrives without warning. He barely sleeps at the house now, just bouncing from the car to the cabin to the police station and never stopping to think about- about any of it.

He was without her once before and it almost killed him. To be abandoned and manipulated by her, (well, not her, but the woman who has her face and her voice but not her smile), he becomes single-minded.  

He tells anyone who will listen that he’s going to get her back, he’s going to save her. He tells it to the empty house on the rare occasion he’s there, as if just saying it out loud will make it true.

And then he pulls it off. (Well, not him, but he likes to think it was his sheer will power and wishing-on-stars that brought her back to him, not just magic and miracles out of his hands.)

\---

They do not precisely get a happily ever after. All their problems are not solved and the town does not become a blissfully boring paradise. But at the end of long, tiring and troublesome days, they return home to this little yellow house on a bluff by the seaside.

They sit on the porch and watch the horizon. She curls up under his arm and steals his beer and they kiss right out where the neighbors can see, long and deep and careless. (Never carefree, but occasionally careless.) He whispers sweet, corny things in her ear and she giggles, sneaking a hand up under his shirt until it’s too dark to see the waves and they wander inside to bed.

And the little yellow house settles on its bluff, content.


End file.
